Along the lakeshore, many local businesses fluctuate with the seasons - thousands of visitors spend their summers vacationing along the lake, then return home in the winter. In Holland, Saugatuck, and Grand Haven, that means that business owners have time to pursue other projects and explore ways to get involved with their communities.

GROW Café + Bistro in downtown Saugatuck is one of these businesses. In the winter of 2021-2022, Chef Lindsay Payleitner worked as a kitchen specialist at our Community Kitchen. This winter, she and her co-owner/husband, Alec, volunteered at the Food Club. Those experiences inspired them to spearhead a new pilot program for our Food Club guests!

What if, they thought, they could take some of the food rescued through Lakeshore Food Rescue, and create take-and-bake meals at their restaurant to help stock-the-shelves at Food Club? Food Club members would then have a fun and easy way to feed their families. And, that’s just what they did!

Each week this February and March, the team strategically chose a few hundred pounds of our rescued food and, like culinary magic, brought it back a few days later as meals packaged in oven-ready tins designed to feed 4-8 people. By the end of the pilot run, they’d prepared over 300 kits to provide meals for more than 1,000 neighbors!

Some of the creative meals included: beef and mushroom tortilla casserole, venison pasta bake, supreme pizza casserole, and banana bread pudding. We loved being able to offer delicious, easy meals for guests, and we’re all about making good, healthy food accessible for everyone in our community!

Over a year in, the Food Club & Opportunity Hub thrives because of our talented staff, dedicated volunteers, and the outside-the-box thinking of community members like Lindsay and Alec of GROW Café + Bistro. They’re re-opening this week for their 8th season in downtown Saugatuck. While we’ll miss their take-and-bake meals at the Food Club, you can visit them for brunch and lunch now through October!